For much of the year, skiing is the only way to get around Khom, a village of wooden cabins heated by earthen stoves, five hours' drive from the nearest major town in the northern Altay region of Xinjiang. The design of skis have barely changed for centuries. The bottom of the skis are covered with horse-hide and shoes are tied on with leather rope. The direction of the horse fur allows the skis to slide forward, while preventing them from slipping backward when traveling uphill. Cave paintings discovered in Altay - today home to a mixture of ethnic Tuvans and Kazakhs - show rows of figures standing on what look like skis, with herds of animals running below them. Archaeologists have dated the paintings as 10,000 to 30,000 years old, according to Chinese ski historian Shan Zhaojian. That would date them as much older than archaeological findings of skiing in Russia, cited by the International Ski Federation, the sport's governing body, as coming from 6,300 to 5,000 BC. REUTERS/Jason Lee SEARCH "CHINA SKIING" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY. Matching text: CHINA-SKIING/